


No Hands are Half as Gentle

by embroiderama



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Case Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-20
Updated: 2010-01-20
Packaged: 2017-10-06 12:16:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/embroiderama/pseuds/embroiderama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Golden light, brighter than the dirty specks of daylight, glimmered from the edge of Dean's vision, and suddenly he thought of his mother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Hands are Half as Gentle

**Author's Note:**

> This is a remix of [None But Some Falling Rain](http://ghosthunters.cairdean.com/archive/1/nonebut.html) by [](http://hossgal.livejournal.com/profile)[**hossgal**](http://hossgal.livejournal.com/) \-- written for [](http://community.livejournal.com/spn_remix/profile)[**spn_remix**](http://community.livejournal.com/spn_remix/). I very much recommend reading that story first!

"Hey, Winchester!" That butthole Billy Dewire called up to Dean where he perched on top of the jungle gym. From the high bars, Dean could see inside the cafeteria where the Kindergarten, first and second grade kids were eating lunch. Sometimes, he got a glimpse of Sam chowing down on his lunch or at least his fuzzy little head going past the window. "Hey!"

"What?" Dean looked away from the window with a scowl down at the kid who'd been bugging him since his first day at this school.

"I bet it's not even true that your mother's dead." The stupid teacher, Mrs. Rosen, couldn't keep her mouth shut, had to tell the teacher's aide about the _poor boy whose mother passed away_ in a whisper loud enough to carry across the room.

Dean's stomach tensed and he wrapped his hands tight around the cool metal bars on either side of his legs. "Shut up."

"I bet your dad just tells people that so they don't know she just took off and left."

"You shut your mouth or I'll--" Dean's stomach clenched down so tight he could barely breathe. He had to move, had to go, had to do something.

"She's probably out in Vegas with some--"

Dean pushed off the bars with a rough shout. Billy's eyes went wide just before Dean hit, hands first on the front of Billy's shoulders, the weight of his falling body knocking the broader boy down to the ground. Dean wrapped his legs around Billy's hips and slugged him in the gut. "Shut up," he ground out.

Billy swung out with his fists. Dean ducked most of the wild, imprecise blows, but one caught him in the side of the head, making his ear ring loud enough that he didn't hear the fifth grade teacher shouting until he was right next to them. Mr. Whoever pulled Dean up into the air where he couldn't reach Billy anymore, and only then did he stop swinging.

~~~

Everybody--the teachers, the principal, Dad--wanted to know why he and Billy got into a fight but Dean wasn't telling. He wouldn't repeat those lies to strangers who might believe them, and he could never say those things to Dad. Never.

Billy, it seemed, had decided to shut up, too.

Dad just sighed, rubbed his hand across his face and led Dean out to the car with a hand on his shoulder. Dean held the icepack the nurse had given him to his ear as they drove away from school and into a neighborhood filled with the kind of sketchy little motels that Dad never liked to stay at if they could help it.

Dad stopped the car in front of a boarded-up building. "Dean?"

"Yeah?" Dean looked over and met his father's eyes for the first time since he showed up at the school.

"You doin' okay over there?"

"Yes, sir." His head still hurt a little, but he wasn't a baby.

Dad held his gaze for a moment and then nodded. "Come on inside with me, but stay right behind me, okay? And watch where you step."

"Yes, sir." Dean put the now-warm ice pack on the dashboard and followed his father out of the car and around the side of the building. Dad pried a board away from the back door and then turned back to look at Dean again.

"You stay right with me, you understand?"

"I know."

Dean watched his father shoulder through the opening he'd made and then followed, stepping into the dim room. Dean blinked against the darkness and, even before his eyes adjusted to see by the bits of light that slipped in through the boards and paper covering the windows, he could feel that the room was big and high-ceilinged, like the gym at school.

Golden light, brighter than the dirty specks of daylight, glimmered from the edge of Dean's vision, and suddenly he thought of his mother. He remembered the way her hair had glowed gold in any kind of bright light. She would hold him on her lap when he was tired before bed time and he'd stroke her hair where it fell over her shoulder. It was a thousand different shades of gold in the light from the reading lamp next to the couch, and Dean would smooth it down over the plushy fabric of her robe until it felt like satin under his fingertips.

_"Baby."_

He heard her voice then, the voice that had been gone so long that he didn't even know that he remembered what it sounded like. He froze in place, staring at the golden light shining from the dark corner. "Mama," he whispered, the word feeling weird on his lips.

_"Dean, baby, where are you?"_

Dean took half a step forward and half a step back, torn between the desire, the need to follow that voice and the fear of it not being real, of what he might find close-up. Despite the warmth of its color, the light felt cold; the air felt like standing in front of an open fridge, and Dean shivered.

His shoulder hurt, suddenly, and when he looked up to see his father standing behind him the strange golden light blinked out, and all he could hear was the sound of his father's harsh breaths above him.

Dad kept his hand on his shoulder, not squeezing so tightly now, and guided him out of the room, off to pick up Sammy from school. Dean watched the corner of the room as they left, but it remained empty and silent. When they got inside the car, Dean felt weirdly alone.

~~~

Dad said no more fighting and Dean tried. Billy started in again at recess, detailing all the things Dean's mother was probably doing rather than staying with them or being dead, and Dean tried to ignore him. He shut out Billy's voice, shut out what he remembered from his nightmare the night before--the image of her bleeding and burning and reaching out to gather him in with charred arms. He thought about the voice from the golden light, how real and sweet it had sounded. Just the memory of it called to him and, when he heard Billy say something that he didn't really understand other than to know it was dirty and bad, he let his fist swing straight for Billy's nose.

~~~

When they went back to the old burned-out building, Dad told him to stay outside in the car. Dean nodded, didn't say, "Yes, sir," because maybe if he didn't say anything it wasn't like he'd really promised to stay put. From outside the building, he couldn't hear the voice but he could feel it. It pulled at him like those leashes some people put on stupid little kids, except it was wrapped around something inside his chest rather than his wrist. He waited long enough for his father to get inside the building and start working on whatever he had planned before he slipped out of the car and ran around the back of the building and inside.

_"Baby."_

He heard the voice as soon as he stepped into the cold room and, as his eyes got used to the darkness, he could see the golden light shining from the corner, brighter than before. He picked his way across the floor as silently as he could, and the lights pulled together, forming into the shape of a woman. He blinked against the dust floating in the air and saw his mother's face smiling at him, beckoning him with her silence as much as she had with her voice. He stared, not wanting to blink again for fear that she would turn into just lights again.

"Mama," he whispered, taking another step closer to the corner. A loud noise crashed from the back of the room, and his mother's face burst into pinpricks of golden light.

"Dean!" Dad's voice bellowed behind him, and the lights winked out into blackness. Dad's hand was on his shoulder, gentle this time, and Dean shivered, leaning back into the large, warm hand. He hadn't felt so cold and tired since that time when the car broke down a few miles away from the nearest pay phone. Dad had carried Sammy but he couldn't carry the both of them and, by the time the lady at the little store had him sitting in their break room with her big winter coat wrapped around him and a paper cup of hot chocolate in his hand, he'd barely been able to stay on his feet.

He remembered walking out to the car and riding away from the burned building, remembered Sammy asking a lot of questions that he didn't have the energy to answer, but he didn't remember walking into the apartment or getting in bed. _Must have been Sammy walking this time instead of me_, Dean thought when he woke up with his stomach rumbling, ready for dinner.

~~~

"We're going to see a woman, might be able to help us," Dad had said as they drove away from dropping Sammy off at school. "Be polite, son, but don't talk to her unless I tell you it's okay."

When he stood on her porch, watching from just behind his father's shoulder, he hoped that he didn't have to talk to her. Her hair was like a handful of sleeping snakes, just waiting to wake up and snap at him like Medusa in the mythology books. Her eyes flashed crazy like the eyes of the man they'd seen in Philadelphia, sitting at the end of an alley in his nest of newspapers.

They stepped inside Ms. Majean's house, and Dean breathed through his slightly-parted lips to avoid smelling the place. Rotting things and strange smoky smells, spice and musk and dust and underneath it all odor of the woman herself. She and Dad talked about the thing in the burned building, the thing Dad said wasn't really Mom, and they talked about him like he wasn't even standing there.

The strange woman reached her hand out toward his face and he forced himself not to pull back, to be polite like Dad said. She kept calling him pretty, like he was a girl or something, but finally she stepped back, pulled her hand, her smell, farther away. She and Dad talked, and Dean just stared around the room, at the dark corners full of lumpy furniture. When she asked him questions, he nodded but didn't speak. When Dad said it was time to go, he didn't waste any time.

~~~

The burned place was even colder in the dark of early morning. The street lights outside weren't strong enough to pierce through the boards covering the windows. Dean had been able to feel the pull of the silent voice inside him from a block away and, now that they were inside, he could hear it whispering in his head. He held the flashlight while Dad poured circles of salt on the floor and he kept his back to the corner the lights always came from, but he could still see stray golden sparks out of the corner of his eye.

When the circles were done and everything laid out, Dean sat hugging his knees for warmth and looked down at the floor instead of out into the glimmering darkness. Sammy was back at the apartment building, staying overnight on the landlady's couch, but Dean wondered what Sammy would see if he looked into that corner. He couldn't remember Mom at all, wouldn't know her voice.

Would he hear nothing, see nothing? Or was it real, despite what Dad said, real enough for Sammy to see her face and hear her voice for the first time he would ever remember? Didn't matter anyway because Sammy was never coming to this place, never going to meet the lady with the snakes on her head and the rotting things in her mouth and her eyes.

Dean heard the scrape of wood across concrete and looked over to see Dad fiddling with the wooden board and glass dome Ms. Majean had given him. He could hear his father's breathing across the few feet that separated them, heavy but controlled, measured out like pieces of string.

"Mary Winchester," he said out into the darkness like a challenge.

The voice was just a quiet murmur in Dean's mind and the golden light was just a flicker. He felt like it was hiding from Dad but drawn in to his own presence, unwilling or unable to leave all the way.

"Mary Winchester," Dad said, and Dean realized he'd never really heard his mother's name like that, both parts together, like a teacher calling attendance in the morning.

"M-mary Winchester." Dad's voice broke in the middle of the name, like he had choked on some of the dust in the air.

"Mary Winchester. Mary Winchester," Dad kept calling, a small scratch on the floor marking every five times.

"Mary Winchester." Dad kept calling the name, his voice falling into a rhythm like a chant. After a while, Dean lay his head down on top of his knees, but he could still see the golden flicker growing brighter at the edge of his vision. The syllables of his mother's name fell apart after a while.

"Mare Eewin Chester. Mare Eewin Chester."

After a while, the beating of his heart keeping time with Dad's calling, searching syllables, Dean curled up on his side with Dad's jacket underneath his head and shoulders. He closed his eyes but he could see the ever-stronger golden light through his eyelids. He heard his mother's voice, what sounded like the way he remembered her voice calling him in from the back yard.

_"Dean, baby, come to me. Come on out of that circle. Come to me. Come to your mama."_

He wanted to. He wanted to go to her the way he wanted to watch Sammy's class to make sure he was okay, the way he wanted to follow after Dad every day, everywhere. But Dad had said it was just another spirit, not his mother, and why would she be here anyway, in this burned up dance hall in a stupid town far from Lawrence, Kansas?

He closed his eyes, but he couldn't stop hearing the voice of the spirit calling for him or the voice of his father calling for the spirit, calling for his mother, calling for something out in the darkness that had stolen a piece of Mary Winchester.

Dad stopped and breathed, unsteady like he was shivering in the big, chilly room. "Mary Winchester. Mary Winchester. Mary Winchester. Mary Winchester. Mary Winchester." His voice sounded a little different every time, like there were a thousand different Mary Winchesters, a thousand different versions of Mom, and he had to call all of them.

Dean wanted for things to be quiet, wanted Dad to stop calling out into the golden glimmering darkness, wanted to leave the burned out building. Dad kept calling the name out. The room got colder. Dean pulled the heavy leather jacket around his body against the chill and then up over his head to block out the voice calling more loudly, shrill now and finally sounding nothing like Mom.

Dad paused, and the voice sounded so close, desperate and demanding, lonely like waiting forever for somebody to come home.

"Mary. Winchester," Dad said with a kind of finality, and then the high calling voice cut off with the tap of thick glass on wood. Dean saw only darkness behind his eyes, and he blinked them open to see no golden sparkles anywhere. Other than the two of them in their separate circles on the floor, the room felt utterly empty.

Dean thought he should stand up, hold the flashlight again as Dad worked, sweep apart the circles with his feet, but he couldn't find the energy to stand up. The cold concrete below was seeping through the leather and fabric around him, but then Dad picked him up, and he couldn't stop himself from settling against the warm strength there. Sleep and dreams pulled at him as strongly as the spirit's voice had.

In the dream, they were back in their own house and Dad was carrying him up the stairs to bed. Mom walked ahead of them, her golden hair swinging back and forth as she climbed the steps. They got to his bedroom, and she reached her hands out to take him, to tuck him into bed.

"Mama," he cried out, reaching for her.

"Shhhhh," Dad said against his ear. "Shhhh, don't wake the baby."

Dean felt his bed beneath him, and he felt Dad's calloused fingers on his forehead, Mom's hand smoothing the covers flat. He slept.


End file.
